Latest from Clay Waters

The front of the New York Times Sunday Review gifted readers with condescension toward both conservative Christians and Fox News watchers from contributing religion writer Amy Sullivan: “A Very Merry War on Christmas.” The text box: “Conservative media spawns a new religious worldview: ‘Fox evangelicalism.’” Not only did the paper tar all evangelicals with a fringe idea of Trump as holy, it threw in yet more mockery of Fox News (the paper’s favorite target of late) into the mix and gave the screed pride of place at the top of the front page of the Sunday Review. It came accompanied by a vivid graphic, filling two-thirds of the page, of a golden likeness of Trump (like a golden calf, perhaps?) as an ornament on a Christmas tree.

New York Times “fact-checker” Linda Qiu's latest lame “gotcha” attempt against President Trump appeared under a strongly hostile headline, “Deceit and Confusion In Talk on Law and Order.” It comes on the heels of a backfired Times investigation -- a graph purporting to compare the lies of Donald Trump (103 after 10 months in office) and Barack Obama (just 18 during eight full years).Qiu has previously used a misleading argument to falsely slam a defense of gun rights as “spurious.” On Saturday, she focused on four alleged Trump falsehoods on Saturday, two of which aren’t actually false, and the other two of which are sufficiently vague as to avoid classification entirely:

Robert Mueller is the liberal New York Times new favorite prosecutor. (Being criticized by Donald Trump and the Republican Congress will do that to you.) Reporters Nicholas Fandos and Charlie Savage praised deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s defense of Mueller in “Firm Defense of Mueller As Republicans Attack.” And a Times lead editorial personally mocking Fox News hosts as conspiratorial drunks in “Fox News v. Robert Mueller.”

The every-more radical Newsweek’s blame-Trump-for-everything philosophy reached a nadir Monday afternoon, with the headline “Because of Trump, People Are Burning Israeli Flags and Attacking Jews.” Sadly, Jews have been attacked in Europe long before Donald Trump arrived on the political scene. A more accurate headline would read: “Because They Hate Jews, Radical Muslims Are Burning Israeli Flags and Attacking Jews.”

President Trump is attacking the media once again, and the New York Times is playing scared, and playing the “dictator” card. The front page of Wednesday’s Times featured Steven Erlanger in Brussels shaming Trump, and suggesting he’s somewhat responsible for foreign dictators acting like foreign dictators, in “Globe’s Autocrats Echo Trump’s ‘Fake News’ Cry.”

Twin toadying: New York Times political reporter Amy Chozick relished Hillary Clinton and other women D.C. liberal feminist figures (both in and out of power) in two stories Sunday, one on the front of Sunday Styles and one on the front of Sunday Business. Chozick, who led the paper’s coverage of Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign, couldn’t help fawning over Clinton even in a mildly critical story.

New York Times writer Max Fisher’s “The Interpreter” column on President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was crammed with historical falsehoods: “Jerusalem, Explained: Why Trump’s Decision Matters and What’s Next.” Fisher has previously used his odd “Interpreter” perch to go to amazing lengths to suggest that there's some doubt as to the motive of radical Islamic terrorist Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando in June 2016. His latest long piece relies on blatant omissions and misstatements to convince readers Trump’s decision is unfair and politically cynical.

Saturday’s New York Times lead desperately tried to spin away the strong Trump economy by warning of hypothetical dangers from a tax cut plan that’s not passed into law yet or even set in stone yet: “Sizzling Economy Carries Warning: Tax Cuts May Burn – Concerns of Inflation – Jobs Report Lifts Trump but Raises Specter of ‘Boom-Bust Cycle.” It's a churlish pattern on the part of the paper, which resolutely refuses to give President Trump any credit for the economy -- while blaming him for social tensions and even an alleged rise in hate crimes.

Sports Illustrated magazine fawned over Colin Kaepernick after the magazine awarded him its 2017 Muhammad Ali Legacy Award. Eleven pages of the December 11 print magazine were devoted to worship of the out-of-work quarterback. SI writer Michael Rosenberg was positively reverent in his article “Truth Teller," which avoided the word "flag," the very thing Kaepernick was protesting, while hailing him for his "steadfastness in the fight for social justice" and insisting "yes, he has been blackballed" from the NFL.

The New York Times is still trying to spin the congressional sex scandals in the Democrats’ direction, as demonstrated in three stories Friday virtually bragging that their stand on Franken will put them on the “unassailable” “high ground” for Campaign 2018. The paper frantically spun for the party of Bill Clinton on a day when a presidential hopeful for 2020 was resigning in disgrace: "Democrats appear determined to grab the moral high ground in an environment in which they hope sexual harassment becomes a wedge issue in the 2018 midterm elections – even if it costs them popular colleagues and political icons."

The front of Thursday’s New York Times anticipated today’s resignation by Sen. Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, over sexual harassment allegations, by working hard to make it a bipartisan scandal, and even allowing the Democratic Party to claim the "high ground," despite the fact that the two most prominent sitting congressmen under fire for harassment are Democrats (the other being veteran Michigan Rep. John Conyers).

President Trump, fulfilling a promise that other presidents have made but failed to keep, recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and started the process of moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv. Times reporters were predictably aghast, both downplaying Jewish ties to Jerusalem and warning of violence and endangement of the non-existent "peace process."

Betraying its obvious antagonism toward America’s ally Israel, and coddling the statehood hopes of Palestinians (along with much of the rest of the media), the New York Times reacted with alarm to the breaking news Tuesday that President Trump would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Israel’s center of government since 1948.

Reporting from Northern Virginia, New York Times Michael Tackett’s full-page, 1,700-word story led Tuesday’s National section: “Outraged and Inspired, Women Join the Political Fray.” The online headline got more specifically partisan: “Women Line Up to Run for Office, Harnessing Their Outrage at Trump.” It’s the latest in a pattern of Times pieces trying to drum up (Democratic) women candidates and votes to dent or overturn Republican congressional majorities and further hurt President Trump.

Are tax cuts anti-God? New York Times religion reporter Laurie Goodstein again celebrated a protest movement by the religious left (while chiding the religious right) in “50 Years Later, New Push to Magnify Plight of Poor.” The text box: “A plan to mount large protests on 40 consecutive days," keyed to the new tax bill that in Goodstein's words, "mainly benefits corporations and the rich."

Another day, another left-wing report hammering the Republican tax plan on the front page of the New York Times, this time in the lead section on Sunday. Kate Zernike and Alan Rappeport penned one of a pair of lead stories on the Republican’s passing their tax plan in the Senate, under a headline that didn't even nod toward objectivity: “Next Objective: Cutting the Safety Net.”

In covering the shocking firing of NBC Today host Matt Lauer over sexual harassment allegations, the New York Times chose to focus on the shocking results of campaign 2016 and the loss of their favored candidate Hillary Clinton. After two decades of Lauer’s liberal bias (and hypocritical criticism of sexual harassment by Donald Trump and Bill O’Reilly), the Times could only focus on how Lauer supposedly treated Hillary Clinton in unfair, biased, and sexist fashion during a September 2016 presidential forum featuring her and Donald Trump by actually conducting a tough journalistic interview with the candidate for a change.

The New York Times most left-wing economics reporter attacked the Republican tax plan in Thursday’s off-lead story, “G.O.P. Tax Plan Could Reshape Life in the U.S. – More Inequality Likely – Cutbacks in Social Safety Nets, Education and Health Care." Years ago, Peter Goodman penned gloating left-wing, Marxist-tinged reports on economics for the Times, and nothing has changed upon his return:

Here's some radical chic with a violent twist: After apologizing for allegedly normalizing a Nazi sympathizer last week, the New York Times celebrated violent hard-left Antifa (the “anti-fascists” who actually delight in identify-hiding uniforms, violence, and other fascist tactics) on the front of the Styles section Thursday. Don’t expect a similar backlash from the paper’s leftist readership.

President Trump referred to liberal Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a potential 2020 presidential rival, as “Pocahontas” while honoring Navajo code talkers from World War II, and White House reporter Julie Hirschfeld Davis was not having it. Her Tuesday’s New York Times report accused Trump of inflicting a “racially charged controversy” upon the ceremony. Yet the fact that Warren long claimed a phony Native American heritage to further her academic career at Harvard apparently wasn’t in itself “racially charged.” Davis quickly slapped the race card down on Trump alone, in “At Event for Code Talkers, Trump Again Derides Warren as ‘Pocahontas.”’

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